Mats Milhamre

Mats Milhamre was born in Malmö, Sweden on January 13th, 1964. Throughout his life Mats has always been very creative in some way, both with music, writing and art. He began drawing at an early age, fascinated by the cartoon art. He spent many hours drawing in his childhood, but in his teenage years most of his time was spent on creating music; he was a songwriter and also played the drums in a band.

In 1998 Mats left Malmö and moved to Lund, an historical town in the south of Sweden. Lund is believed to have been founded around 990 and a lot of historical buildings still stands today. Many of these buildings have played an important role in Mats´s artwork as he has found his own expression by painting the streets and houses of Lund in a nativistic, colorful style.

As a self taught artist, Mats’s early work was done using oil and acrylic. During this period Mats was trying different techniques searching for his own style. His career as an iPad artist began in 2013 inspired by the art of legendary British artist David Hockney after having visited one of his exhibitions at Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Denmark. From that day on all Mats´s artwork has been done using an iPhone or iPad. Mats paints directly on the screen, mostly with his fingers but sometimes also using a stylus pen. He originally used an app called Brushes before updating to Procreate, a specialist art app. Using his iPad Mats started painting Lund and other places in his own nativistic style and in the years that followed his work became more widely recognized as his signature style developed. In his art Mats doesn’t try to convey a specific message but his artwork is characterized by warmth, joy and humor - art that makes people feel good.

In 2013 Mats had his first vernissage at Galleri Milhamre, his own gallery in the backyard of the house where he lives with his wife and two children, shortly after he had his first exhibition at the local gallery in Lund. Three years later, in 2016, Mats made his debut as an illustrator. He created the illustrations for a book called ”Memorabelt! sa Larsson” - a children´s book with historical facts from Lund in the 19th century, written by Claes Wahlöö.

In early 2017 Mats also started a new career as a designer for VIDA. VIDA works with artists from around the world to transform their art into beautiful high quality fashion products in a socially conscious way.